17 - (TRH) The Return Heptalogy, Part One: The Return
by teddybowties
Summary: Thanks to the Doctor and Amy Pond, the memory which restored the universe also restored Gallifrey. With the Ponds off on a honeymoon planet, the Eleventh Doctor comes home to check up on the Master. But as we all know, decay touches every heart…
1. Chapter 0  Prologue and Author's Note

FANDOM: Doctor Who  
AUTHOR: ChellusAuglerie  
TITLE: The Return

GENRE: Drama, Mystery, Suspense  
CHARACTERS: the Eleventh Doctor, the Master, the Time Lords, Various OCs

PAIRING/S: Doctor/Master  
WARNING/S: Violence. And Time-Honoured Gallifreyan Curses.

RATING: M

SPOILERS: Invasion of Time, Sound of Drums, End of Time, Eleventh Hour, The Big Bang, Various Eighth Doctor Adventures if you blink.  
DISCLAIMER: I don't own them. What I do own, it's obvious.  
AUTHORS NOTE: The reader may recognize about three pieces of verbage from the meshyfish site; not necessarily canon, that site, but still a very delicious read for people looking for brain food. Plus, anyone who figures out the anagram gets a fic written especially for them. Whatever you want, people!

SECOND AUTHOR's NOTE: Anyone who is NOT on speaking terms with Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, is NOT fond of wibbly wobbly timey wimey-ness, does NOT think too much, is NOT vaguely familiar with mind sciences, philosophy, psychiatric ideas and such, and has NOT seen all the available episodes from Classic Who/New Who and read some of the books, namely these Eighth Doctor Adventures:

The Year of Intelligent Tigers, The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, Camera Obscura

And

The Seventh Doctor Adventure, Lungbarrow

Will be very confused by this story and its subsequent sequels. If in doubt, ask about something you don't understand. Everything in here is meant to be a treat for the reader. Everything. The more you know, the more you enjoy. So, please ask.

SUMMARY: Thanks to the Doctor and Amy Pond, the memory which restored the universe also restored Gallifrey. With the Ponds off on a honeymoon planet, the Eleventh Doctor comes home to check up on the Master. Naturally, the Doctor is impressed with his progress. But as we all know, decay touches every heart…

THE RETURN HEPTALOGY, PART ONE: THE RETURN

Prologue

A familiar wheeze resounds through the half-melted halls of Gallifrey's Citadel, drawing the Time Lords out from their broken shells of complacency.

Like before, the Chancellory Guards come to investigate.

Also like before, the Blue Box materializes, leaving streaks in the vision of the unwary who look upon her before she's quite dressed.

Unlike before, the Lord President comes to greet the owner of the Box, wearing skinny jeans, a hoodie. The Sash of Rassilon rings his shoulder and waist; a week's worth of stubble graces his short chin.

He waits for the doors to open, unwilling to give even an inch, a single metre to the Box's owner in this instance.

The two doors creak; stout boots fill his view. He moves up. Trousers, tweed and dress shirt follow. Soon a whole body with hair and everything escapes the double entrance.

There is a bowtie, he realizes, shuddering. The thing is green with red stripes.

"Did you just come back from fucking Christmas or something? You look like a donkey's arse."

The owner of the Box just smiles, his sunken green eyes taking in the shining length of the Sash and the bedraggled man upon whose shoulder it hangs from.

"Not exactly, but close enough. Let me guess… you stole it from his cold dead hands," the owner of the Box murmurs as he smacks a hand across the Lord President's back then grips him briefly by a bicep.

"No. he gave it to me. As a birthday present. And, oh look," the Lord President says, waving off his guards long enough to glare. "I'm bigger than you. Get in my belly."

"Not hardly. But then, I'm usually the one playing bottom, at least in the fanfics."

The man who is Lord President rolls his shoulders and smirks.

"You mean those... things where you get pregnant with my love child whilst I deal with my repressed issues by slaughtering all the cute fuzzy animals? Perhaps we should discuss exactly _which_ of us _would_ over a cuppa?"

The owner of the Box smiles and waves his arm in the direction of a scorched hallway.

"Lead on, Koschei," he says, stuffing a jelly baby in the closest guard's gaping mouth as they walk hand in hand toward the Lord President's rooms.


	2. Chapter 1  Tea Time

Chapter One: Tea Time

"Flamina? Is that what she's called? What a lovely name… did you keep the lead-lined walls?"

"You rhymed."

"No I didn't."

"Yes you did. You rhymed."

"Really? Oh… meh; didn't notice. I must be tired."

"You? Tired? From what? Shagging the TARDIS?"

"Don't be so vulgar, Koschei. There's no one around right now to impress."

"Don't dodge the question. You said you were tired. Maybe it's the professorial getup. Are you wearing one of those ridiculous man-corsets?"

'If you're going to tease me, at least get the eras right. Corsets were Victorian Earth. And bowties are cool."

"… I bet you are, aren't you?"

"I'm not sleeping with you Koschei. I came here for a reason."

"Oh, you've got a reason, now? I'm only being this beautiful for your benefit, you know. 'Cause I can, you know… be beautiful."

"Beautiful? Oh! Yes. Right… water under the bridge! Knew you could do it."

"I'd still have the drums if not for you, you fucking sod. I owe you a proper send off at the very least."

"Oh, blah blah blah. I didn't do anything."

"Whatever suits your delusion, you stubborn git. So where'd you stash the Ducks?"

"Ducks? Oh you mean the Ponds. Honeymoon planet. Temporary installment at the hotel."

"Oh that's original. Did you rent them our suite, too?"

"Well… it _is _the best one there."

"So you admit you still pay for it. Does it still have the…"

"Yes. And the…"

"That too? You're a gem. Oh that does make me giddy. Now why are you here, again?"

"Not sure yet. I was attending Christmas dinner with a large group of my companions when I felt a sudden stabbing in my left heart and collapsed."

"And it wasn't a hearts attack? And you collapsed? Really collapsed, not just faked it to get out of eating dinner with the in-laws' family collapsed? Good grief, man, you're younger than I am! Do you know what it was?"

"I was hoping you could tell me. While I was out, I suffered a nasty bout of foresight. It led me here."

"Troubling news… what did you see, Theta? Tell me. Gallifrey has not risen from the ashes of hell only to die in the frozen dust. As President I will not allow it."

"I saw… nothing, Koschei. Nothing but dust. Quite a lot of the stuff; in fact, all of Gallifrey seemed to be full of it. Reminds one of the Great Dust Bowl, circa Earth 1930's."

"Theta. Dust. Dust! Don't you see? It's Traken and Logopolis all over again! Sweet Mother of Chaos..."

"Exactly. But this time it isn't your fault. It isn't anyone's fault, so far. That's what makes this so dangerous. So unsettling. Anyway, that rhyme we learned as Time Tots, the one that always scared you so. Do you remember it?"

"Of course."

"Could you recite it, for me? I need… I need to hear it again."

"I've a mouth don't I, you great bumbleheaded ninny! But drink your tea first. That strange look on your face scares the staazula out of me."

"_Frost in the fire and the rocking chair_

_Frost in the hearth, frost in the ladle_

_Children's voices in the air_

_Wind that rocks the empty cradle."_


	3. Chapter 2 Flaminarixodaparcaftion

Chapter Two: Flaminarixodaparcaftion

She sits down at her dressing table, combing her fingers through long white hair as she watches the bird in its cage.

The bird is a Myrtlegull.

The plaque on the bottom of the cage reads:

_Grandfather_

"How is that wing of yours to-day, Grandfather?" she asks him, plucking idly at the scale-dusted feathers he has shed. Though dead, they still look like him, still shine with fiery shades of nacre and opal.

Of course she knows how it is. The wing is missing; burnt off.

She reaches for the latch on his gilded prison.

Her fingers click the lock out of place; it slides across her skin. She savours the feeling it gives her, the power to choose over something alive.

The bird comes cautiously, his one white eye gleaming like a pearl in an oyster crusted shut. His talons clutch the golden, twisted poles… almost out. Almost free.

As she watches Grandfather's white eye flit in a fit of nerves between open door and arm she fingers the necklace hanging heavy from her throat, noting the weight of it, the cold, old feel of lacy filigree an icy web of silver against her skin.

Grandfather inches forward, clutching at the pole holding his weight as though the twist of gilding is a lifeline, as though it is a tightrope between him and salvation.

His head cocks at the star sapphire set in that silvery web. He stares, and thoughts flicker in his tiny brain.

  
  
  
  
  
iwanttokillthiswoman  
miserymiserymisery

Suddenly her hand closes over the crystal; it is a large pink-orange star sapphire hewn in the shape of an egg… a blue-star padparadscha. And it's huge, big enough to fit in her hand.

As her flesh covers the shine of the stone, the bird shrinks away from the door, back along the twists of gold and into the center of the cage. Once there, he hides his one pearly eye under his good wing, almost like a child terrified of fire, huddled and crying out against some hidden monster.

"Good boy, Grandfather," she says, her thoughts lingering over the stone as her skin tastes its chill.

Grandfather is back to being a bird again. He's already forgotten the jewel which hangs around her neck by now.

With a smile hovering beneath blank eyes full of someone else's rage, she reaches inside the gilded door to the birdcage.

"It's always like this, isn't it my love?" she murmurs to the jewel as she lifts it, dangling it in front of her face with her free hand, while she wraps the other around the keening Myrtlegull's neck.

The bird makes no sound, of course. His vocal chords have been severed.

Not even the squeal of scrabbling talons erupts against the sides of the golden cage as she twists her wrist, snapping the tiny bones in Grandfather's neck.

Her eyes shift to look completely into the jewel, and she laughs like a child, for she begins to see her loved one in its depths.

A single eye appears briefly to float within the blue star at the center of the sapphire, sitting and waiting, so patient where it watches from the Crack.

"Come, my dearest," her lips mouth as she rises, the jewel clutched firmly in her hand, caught in the silver setting of the necklace, and she continues in a dreamy tone, "… let us go to the fete. They say the Doctor will be there."

Ah, yes… the gilded cage again.

Once she is gone, the dust on the floor of the birdcage stirs into a storm, and Grandfather is, again, Grandfather. Being so, the bird resumes its perch for the billionth time, happy to wait for his mistress.


	4. Chapter 3 Les habits du samedi

Chapter Three: _Les habits du samedi_

"… is that her, then?" says the Doctor softly, smoothing his long cerulean silk coat –the one with the peacock buttons- over a cream and sherry vest as he points a long digitis secundus at a girl with white hair who is standing by the window. He elbows the Master with a chaste half-nudge, driving his arm into the man's side.

The Master smacks the Doctor on the back of the head, grabbing brown hair and tugging, just so.

"You know, if I didn't know any better I'd think you were jealous, _Doctor_," the Master-who-is-currently-Lord-President says flatly, uttering a low, entirely lewd growl in the woman's general direction for the Doctor's benefit.

"Jealous of you, Koschei? I'd sooner be jealous of a Drumaani Fishpig," comes the Doctor's reply, fast and easy and completely without a care. But his eyes rest on the girl, and do not look away. "Shall I go to her? Tell her what an egomaniacal rapscallion you are?" He raises a glass, and does not lower it.

The Master smirks and semi-consciously adjusts the Sash where it is slipping from his shoulder, yet again.

"It's always been a bit fickle, the old thing. Although I have to say, it liked me more than him," says the Doctor, patting the bawdy string of gold bars-of-station that form its length. "I rather think it looked better on me, too."

He misses the Master's sidelong glance, though, for his sunken green eyes are fastened on something across the room, a shimmering necklace around the albino woman's neck that seems to flirt with the complicated dimensional physics of the grand hall, softly tugging at them from somewhere out of sight and skewing the walls, ever so slightly.

"Your _girlfriend_ has an interesting toy in that torque, Kosch…" he murmurs, staring at the jewelry through his wine glass.

"What?"

"That necklace she's wearing, it's rather… different."

The Lord President seems annoyed, agitated suddenly as though something has caught at his shoulder, exactly, the Doctor notes with some dismay, in the direction of the Lady Flaminarixodaparcaftion.

"What necklace? I'm giving her this severed hand I found crawling around the Wastes as a present," he mutters, "Are you drunk on ginger beer or something? I don't remember letting these morons serve you any. Do let up on the drinking, would you? Funny thing, that hand… seems to have warmed up to me, but it doesn't seem to like Flamina very much. Bloody picky thing… still she's good with that bird of hers, and she loves grotesques as much as I do. Besides, it's not like I can follow in its owner's footsteps and cut it off twice if it doesn't play a proper game of pinochle, eh?"

_A hand, you say? Just a hand? Really, Koschei? How could you not know what… _

"I wouldn't. Get her something else less… grabsy."

A laugh erupts from his throat, covering the hall and causing Flamina, in her gown of watery silk and pearls, to turn in their direction.

By accident, it would seem, the Doctor finds his view through the wineglass raised just enough to see the woman's neck, now strangely free of the weird ornament.

So he slips the glass up farther, and sees… the edge, the bare, cold edge, of something squirming. Something bloated and wriggling and… full of dust.

Suddenly her eyes are full on him, blinking, boundless chunks of sapphire, glistening, searching, reaching into him, pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling away his…

Feeling a numbness in his fingers, the Doctor lets the glass slip from his grip and tumble down, shattering into pieces and spilling good striped wine all over the marble tiled floor.

Every head but hers turns to stare in his direction; a moment ago, before the revelation in the glass, he would have thought this strange. Now, he finds it abjectly terrifying.

Her soft laugh rings like bells throughout the hall, silver and titillating. It reminds somehow of Poe's _Masque of the Red Death_.

Odd how duty seems to choose him, he thinks as he extricates himself from the partygoers and seeks a tentative comfort in the Lord-President's lead-lined walls.

But as he touches the door handle, the door does not open onto the safe-room he orchestrated so long ago.

He is back in the parlouresque hall, holding his glass just so, about to catch a glimpse of…

Suddenly a white anomaly blurs his field of vision; feathers fly up, fly out, and claws scratch the glass from his hands.

Before others' hands attempt without success to drag its owner away, one pearly eye catches the light. It gapes at him, pleading with his old-ness as if for release. As if it knows him.

Then the hands return, and climb over it, clambering over its great wings and its head and its one eye.

But in a final defiance it shrieks, lashing out.

A claw catches the Doctor on the neck, severing a vein. He gives no resistance.

Then he collapses.

Blood is everywhere around him, for the second time.

Blackness comes.


	5. Chapter 4 The Other Horn of the Oryx

Chapter Four: The Other Horn of the Oryx

"Find the bitch."

The Master's voice singsongs across the hall. His tone is soft, considerate.

The look in his eyes is anything but.

His hand holds something precious as it tangles in the Doctor's hair; his fingers are caked in blood.

Not wanting to release his hand, he uses telekinesis to float his hoodie off of his body and fold it under the Doctor's head.

The younger Time Lord is micro-convulsing in short, rapid bursts, his whole frame shaking with the effort of fighting what is happening to him.

His green eyes hover near the Master's face. His vision is cloudy with some kind of dust.

The Master cringes as he follows the trail of dust that is slowly creeping along the man's face.

The flesh is turning a grayish clay color; soon it will be just like the pile of dust that used to be the Doctor's sonic probe.

"You dropped your screwdriver, you stupid git," the Master says, scrubbing his thumb down over the Doctor's face. As he stares, the crawling dust directs into an eye duct, turning one sunken green peridot the color of a shining pearl. A tear rolls down his own cheek, and he smacks his free hand at the unfamiliar feeling, swatting at the drop like he would a fly. "Do you see the bits of guard over there? Those piles of dead skin and pomp? The bird scratched them too. You've lasted this long, Theta! Don't… don't do this!"

The Doctor grins with half a mouth, whispering for his friend to lean closer. The other half of his face is fast becoming marble-ine dust. As the Master holds him, his jawline develops a crack, and starts to crumble…

"Koschei," he murmurs, exhaling particles of himself against the older Time Lord's cheek as he raises up, plastering himself against the man as he struggles to speak, "… three things, to start with:"

"What?" the Master croaks, amazed that his old friend has the strength to lift himself on only one arm, one arm that was turning to clay even now, in the mess of leftover blood and reddened dirt.

"One-she's still a child inside, Kosch… she can still be saved."

"Two- Trust me."

The Lord President-who-is-the-Master feels his lips trembling. He scrubs a hand through his dirty blonde hair, realizing only after he does it that his hand was full of dust, the still-breathing remains of a man who so often before had slipped through his fingers in a different way.

But this time is more vexing, somehow.

"And door number three, Mister Warhol?"

The laugh in his old friend's one good eye stretches to eternity, in that moment.

He laughs, too.

And then,

"Geronimo!"


	6. Chapter 5 The Shape of Purity

Chapter Five: The Shape of Purity

There is a long hall, somewhere.

It stretches into the distance, echoing across a landscape unknown to most.

She remembers when she first saw the Eye in the ruins of the Museum.

That was the first time she saw the Hall of Neverwhens. She'd been following Grandfather the Gull over a broken section of wall near the sea, picking her way over stones and pieces of great marble faces and arms, using bits of column as a bridge, here and there. Then she'd lost sight of him in the bright of falling fire, and when she'd found him again, his wing was burnt off, and his one remaining eye was white as a pearl.

Like a child, _-well, she'd been a child, really- _she'd reached for the Eye as it stuck there among the rocks and boulders and broken marbles, and of course, she'd been slapped away by a bloody-faced man in a green velvet coat. Then he'd taken another look. He'd grimaced at her, and then stepped away. Soon the footfalls had turned to running.

He'd left her alone with it.

Alone, with it.

Alone.

With _it_.

That had been the beginning of the end.

The beginning of the End.

The Beginning of…

Why hadn't he saved her? Why hadn't he explained what was to come?

She'd been so afraid when it called to her that first time, after the fighting and the burning had ended.

But now, she dangled its beautiful, thick silver chain in her fingers, idly watching the bauble which held the Eye toss and flounce on its finding.

The Eye itself was quiet to-day; it often was, when Grandfather wasn't with her; still, she had closeted her Type 103 TT Capsule as _just another white tree_ in the glass-sand desert called the Sea of Transparent Ponderings some time ago, and even though her ship slept, Grandfather would know where it was.

Yes, he would come eventually.

He always did.

He had, after all, been the first to find the Eye, the first to reveal their shared Destiny.

He had been the first to look into its depths and see the truth.

His scream, in fact, had been her call to awakening. It had been what led her to him, across the ashy remains of the pale Museum terrace with its fluted columns and raised steps. It had been then that she'd decided what to call him. The Eye had whispered his name in her ear.

Since that day, she'd always known that she would meet the man in the velvet coat again… if only to get revenge for making Grandfather cry.


	7. Chapter 6 Inroads

Chapter Six: Inroads

"… and the next minute we're machete-ing through this thick jungle-y stuff, across a ridiculous rope bridge, in our own head! Preposterous! Ludicrous, even! Course, if Peri were here, I'd trick her into doing it for me... hrm!"

"Well, I for one rather wish that Sarah Jane were here. I miss her muttering at me… Say, Seven… what shall we do now?"

"Really? Grace would have liked Peri… I think. This view is beautiful, though."

"…fantastic."

"I think we should cross the bridge! What do you think, Ten?"

"I think _someone_ should try building a tea caddy out of celery sticks and a cricket bat, for all the good it would do. I'm out of ginger beer again." _–He snaps his fingers, and a new bottle appears in his hand-_ "One, would you like another?"

"Celery sticks! I swear, every time I see it… hahahahaha! Still, I would have liked for Romana to be here…"

"I'm just glad the Rani isn't. But I do wonder if Death has a marker in here somehow…"

…_a clink, as of teacups knocking softly together. _

"That does seem sound at this point, Ten. Eight seems reasonably in possession of a noticeable degree of sanity. Strange, though… he appears to be distracted."

"Eight? Eight! No, you'll fall! Hold on! Oh dear, someone help me wake him! Eight!"

…_the sound of a small table being scuffed over thick planks or reeds quickly, as though someone has risen with a sudden fright._

… _finally, the tapping of a cane; the screech of a dog whistle._

…_a shuffle of resultant quiet, and then, nine anxious pairs of feet resume the bridge._


	8. Chapter 7 Quantum of Solace

Chapter Seven: Quantum of Solace

"… and _Johnny_ comes _marching_ home!" the Master calls out as he stalks the halls back to the lead-lined rooms of the Lord President. His face is plastered with a crisp smile, a smile that screams, 'Avoid me or suffer the consequences.'

He reaches the infamous chamber, turns his back to the door as it clicks laboriously into place like some tremendous locking puzzle. Then he leans into the comforting thick lead and stares around the room.

There is the desk where the Doctor said he'd tangled with Borusa over the location of the Great Key.

Here is the bed the Doctor pretended to sleep in after the Matrix Crown refused his mind and nearly sapped him senseless before he'd confided in Borusa.

Ahhh, the Good Old Days, and for reminiscence! Oh for the marriage of lead and titanium-based alloys!

…

In a small niche, a hexagonal table stands lonely.

Odd. That was not there before.

He walks to the usurper stick of furniture, idling.

He runs his fingers across it, along its tapered sides, its squarish legs.

His skin contacts a thin piece of paper. He stops for a moment, then rips it off the underside of the drab little thing.

"A post-it note. Oh Doctor, how thoughtful!" he rages, flipping his hand away from his face like a simpering Earth girl in one of those dreadful movies.

Then he uncrumples it with one hand, reading the one-liner written on it so many times the paper begins to smear.

'_Duck, duck, goose.'_

"Oo, I like it! A Treasure Hunt!" the Master says to his hand. "Hide and Seek, even!"

Then he looks at the note one more time before raising it to his mouth and chewing.

_Well, you know what they say… what's good for the goose is good for the gander._

By the time he's swallowed the sticky note completely, he's already out the door and off to the nearest guard station, whistling and humming that song from _Snow White_.

But the table is not finished yet.

And neither is it a table.

Quickly, it grows fingers from legs, and an upper palm from tabletop.

And then it shrinks to size, proper hand-size, rather than the conspicuity of a table who might scrabble away on its own.

Off to the medical bay it happily tromps, behind feet and footsteps and on the backs of unsuspecting guards, to pay a visit to its only living master.


	9. Chapter 8 Conceptual Space

Chapter Eight: Conceptual Space

His eyes stare upward as he falls.

He was, of course, jolted awake by the scent of all the moisture in the atmosphere. Must be his fascination with rain. Although, droplets of freezing cold hydrogen dioxide descending at high speed into the depths of one's nostrils while one is busy plummeting from the great height of a high-swept jungle bridge is rather unpleasant…

The air is rushing over his body, tumbling over him like so many little waves; countless currents buffet his clothes, rippling through his shoulder-length curls as he grows closer to the… ground?

But it isn't the ground that his straining back will strike; all of the jungle's trees seem to have vanished, and the jungle as well.

Now, there is only sea air between him and oblivion… and that huge glass dome towering above familiar cliffs.

What, the Museum? Here? He thinks he should have guessed. But where is here?

He folds his arms across his chest like the lone resident of a sarcophagus and waits for the end to come in a shower of exceptional glass and decorative piping.

At least he'll die somewhere with lovely art around him…


	10. Chapter 9 Circle of Steel

Chapter Nine: Circle of Steel

Absently as she walks down the lowest-level entry of the silly Citadel, the Lady Flamina fingers the silver mask in her fingers, the half-face of a bear. There ought to be leaves and twigs coming out of its mouth, oughtn't there? Or is she confused again?

Not quite so absently, she lets her thoughts drift toward the man who had given her the mask.

He had long hair. It was blonde. It shone like waves of sunlight. His eyes were candles, just for her. She hoped he'd got out. She prayed he had. The ruse was over; no need for heroics.

She would not consider the one who had given her birth. That creature had left her to die, with only sweet dreams full of white dresses and parties for her food.

'No,' she breathed, smoothing her dress as she started to jog, then began running through the halls, her free hand clutching the torque.

She was rendered invisible by its power; its cool heat against her breastbone a comfort, much like the touch of Grandfather's feathers against her skin. So soft they were, those feathers. But if she was to escape the Citadel, she must keep her hand on the torque for the loop to stay complete- otherwise the guards she was passing would see her instead of the nothing she wanted them to believe was there.

They would kill her.

They would, because the Master would not stand for her taking the lives of his beloved traitor.

The traitor… yes. She had done well to do for him. Now she could live in the wastes, in her TARDIS, with him. Now she could be free.

But as she mouthed that admission, her foot caught on an upturned hexagonal tile; as she fell, her lavender eyes flamed on the exit out of the Citadel, a small arch with a blue eye atop it. That eye, that arch, like an ancient guardian sitting above her, waiting to smite her for her dreadful sin. No, that wasn't right. She had done nothing wrong. There was no sin.

She lost her balance.

Footsteps as she landed, and then her hand was jarred far away from the touch of the torque, touching instead the boot-top of a man. Elegant, squarish fingers reaching down…


	11. Chapter 10 Comes a Horseman

Chapter Ten: Comes a Horseman

He's never applied to his own person the notion of lesserness.

He's never held the notion of failure close to his breast.

The fact he sits in his stone cell beneath the Capital, beneath the little mice he once had owned, does not deter him from the fact he is a leader.

The new Lord President had been wise to set him a tiny monument, rather than a towering grave.

Inconsequential, for he has long suspected the man has a blue fly in his ear.

And wasn't it obvious now? That the blue fly is the same one he had kept fairly close to _his_ ear once, too.

Question was, how useful was the fly, in its great age? They rarely lived long, regardless of what planet they came from.

A shadow clothed in the sheltering glow of a perception filter that works on Time Lords has been waiting through his reverie. He breaks it himself, not deigning to give even this small pocketful of political grain to the man who is standing before the door of his cell.

"Did you bring the parts I requested, cretin? I cannot reconstruct the machine that will disguise me without them. And without the forged documentation… we might as well forfeit the game."

The bear's mask nods; a silver gleam runs its length across the cell bars. A grey glove passes a bundle through the bars.

Yes, cell bars.

Shiny above, filthy below.

It always makes him laugh. It makes him cry.

For is he not Rassilon?

Oh, he _does_ laugh, this time, as he construes the bits of machina and the papers.

Yes, he is Rassilon. But tonight, Rassilon will die.

Long live.


	12. Chapter 11 Dawn Quixote

Chapter Eleven: Dawn Quixote

"Let me in, you stupid bitch! He's dead and I'm the bastard who gets to tell them!"

The Master just keeps screaming at her. His fists strike the blue painted wood of her unassuming hull. It doesn't chip anymore, because the idiot repainted. That's comforting, at least.

She is fairly certain that 'bitch' is not her name.

So certain in fact, that she calls up the Voice Recognition Interface of Lucy Saxon.

With the Paradox Machine fresh in her mind, she reaches for him with Lucy's arms.

Koschei of Oakdown does nothing as the faint brush of holographic flesh envelops him.

He does nothing as the arms fall through him. He cannot let the guards see him sink to the ground, a pool of man. So he finds something to do there, on the floor where he's curled up into a ball. He bends down, stuffs a hand into his pocket, grabs a pen, then sticks the resultant post-it note on the floor in front of the TARDIS.

He can, however, whisper 'thank you' as her doors open, revealing a console room that is more idyllic scene than control center for a TARDIS.

The Doctor might have called it 'Sunset on Glass, with Sky and Typewriter.' Or 'Portholes.'

The post-it reads:

_BRB- _

_Playing Duck Hunt. _

_Do Not Disturb._


	13. Chapter 12 No Country For Old Men

Chapter Twelve: No Country For Old Men

"Now that you have managed this senile old tosser for me, what do you intend?" the man says, patting the red sarcophagus on the floor beside him. Inside the sarcophagus, a sleeping Time Lord.

"I believe his name is Pasmodius, _sir._" says the man in the mask. "This is the last step in our plan. Soon the Restoration will be finished, and I will be with her again. I thank you for-…"

"I do not care for you. You are youthful and an idiot. I proceed with my part only because I have something to gain from this little affair. An audience with the Doctor. I must see him. I have... something to give him."

The man in the bear's mask smiles, his teeth gleaming in a thin line. His lips are appreciative, but the eyes beneath the mask are reticent.

"Could not the Great Lord Rassilon simply call on the traitor while in this disguise I have provided?"

He truly expects to survive this union, Rassilon muses to himself while he watches _the Terrorist_, as the fool boy has come to call himself, watch his every move as though such childish eyes could ever know anything.

"I imagine I could. How useful, my goodness." He pauses, grinning flatly like a drunkard. "Bah. I've had enough of this dandy! Flutterwing, be gone." His hand waves.

A quip, "Oh, I do remember, sir, that you only _wear _that face…" and then the unfortunate boy walks away, doubtless seething. His fists are wadded tight enough, surely.

Oh yes, he'll have to kill him presently. He thinks fondly of the garrote in his pocket, taking a step after the retreating young blond in the dark.

"Ah! Hail, my friend!" a long familiar breath whispers, the speaker unheard by the now absent boy and, quite acutely, hidden by the artificial night of the Great Lord's crypt. "What are you up to in my old haunting ground? I don't remember telling any of the little pigeons where this place is."

The breath becomes a crisping of frost in the air; the frost becomes a voice and blue eyes, those blue, blue eyes, crystallized in the cold to the hard ice of man. Only one man.

"My Lord." treads he who is not the Great Lord, so carefully now. One slip and his endless mirth will be at an end. "You have cost me a string to be cut. I came to serve myself, that much is plain. But how I might serve you as well, now that you are here, is yet to be seen."

Does he dare, he thinks, does he dare it, in this place? Can he accomplish such a death? Oh, for wicked irony! A frequent bedfellow since that time ago.

"Ha ha haha ha. You are as easy to read as a child's book of pictures. Shall I give you some leash with which to hang yourself?" says himself the real Rassilon, now come fully into view against the dark. "Did you kill the Time Lord whose appearance you stole?"

The Assassin, as he is known to himself, schools his features. If he lets on to the Great Lord, he will be dead yesterday. No- the Great Lord will root him out eventually.

So he tells the truth, belying nothing of his intentions. "I did not have time. He still lives. These surroundings were handy for that. Did you have something in mind, My Lord?"

That smile. The Assassin had seen it consume countless millions on the day Lord Rassilon's daughter, yet unborn, had perished of the Pythia's Curse. That Death lies hungry and watchful beneath that gaze is indisruptable, a fact of simple nature.

"Oh yes, insect. I want you to go back to your cell and ask for the Master. Tell him these exact words. 'The Other is alive and I know who he is.' Not only will such an insouciant bluff give you an excuse to be walking around outside the prison, it will get you a position as Cardinal, as well."

The Assassin become Cardinal, as well! Oh what a place to plot his mischief!

"Remember, my little rat with wings, as you are playing house and waiting for your chance to swoop from the rafters, I shall go and listen in the Panopticon. No one minds a fool. They do as they want, and go as they please."

"I've noticed you around the cells. Also, I've fashioned two more teleport-capable micro-shimmers like my own from the bits the brat gave me, as well as two shimmer-enabled slave nodes. One is hidden in my cell; the other is for quick egress off-planet. He and his Lady are both idiots, of course, but I didn't want either of them thinking. Therefore, would you be so kind as to gift him one? They should work in the Panopticon… you are aware of the pod stuck in the ceiling? It is still functional. I get a faint reading, even from here. If you place the node on the Seal, My Lord… the rest is elemental."

"Of course. How thoughtful of you."

The Assassin holds out two silver rings and a metal disk with a hole in the middle, then smiles. He knows better than to hope he Great Lord does not see through a good portion of this banter. But, he has survived this long after being trapped in the Eye by the Doctor in the eve of the Other's death … surely, clearly, one more escape was in the cards?

The Great Lord takes both, slipping one on. Immediately his hand becomes Pasmodius'gnarled old branch of a limb.

"Excellent work," says the true Rassilon, his false yet somehow more earnest-seeming wrinkles squinting like a Gallifreyan Mandrake as he grins. His mouth, the Assassin decides, looks more like a bloody beak than lips and chompers. "Run along now. I will take care of any Council opposition. There is always my mole in the Dromiean Chapterhouse. No one would suspect them."

"Do you intend to murder anyone, My Lord?"

The old man stares at his back, boring holes like dead stars. He does not see this.

Then Rassilon laughs. He laughs, and he laughs, and he laughs.

The timbre of that laugh holds the blackness of certainty in its mouth like a plaything.

When finally the Great Lord strides away, the Assassin feels a strange sensation running close to the nerves of his spine.

But at last he is alone, save for inconsequential Pasmodius in his borrowed tomb, flanked by four red pillars and dark marble. He should have killed the old man, he should have killed the boy, he should have killed…

He shudders, even as he slips his own ring over his finger and activates the transport back to his prison.

Only then, when his shimmer-disguised foot brushes the hidden node on the floor and his fingers wrap in comfort around the bars of his cell does he breathe.


	14. Chapter 13 A Study In Charlotte

Chapter Thirteen: A Study in Charlotte

Long things with nails. They're the first thing the Doctor notices. He, unknowing, sends a signal their way.

Nerves plop into arrangement; blood pools and fills and floods and flows. There are drippy slices on the things with nails. They sting, belatedly.

With an abruptness those who are properly disembodied should, markedly, be blissfully unaware of, the Doctor realises he is still in the dream of the jungle. He'd been trapped inside, with himself, himself, himself, himself and himself. And then there had been himself. And himself again. And again. And again.

God, but for that dreadful colored coat.

He fiddles with his thoughts, remembering the dust that had come before. There had been something strange, about that dust. But what had come before that? He remembers a bowtie. A blue box…

Ah, the TARDIS, yes!

A girlish simpering squeak forms in the back of his brain.

Ooh, he has a brain! Good to have a brain still, actually.

Still a pain in the neck, but that isn't to be helped.

"Theta Sigma, you are fundamentally an _arsehole! _How the hells am I supposed to get your sorry rump unstuck from _Flesh-coma_? If you'd just told me beforehand I could have prevented your getting stuck between the Flesh body in the Infirmary and this one in the first place! Your real body, hear that, Princess? But no, you had to go and be a _wanker_!" The strains of a spirited rant funnel dimly from somewhere pitchy and rumbly.

And would someone turn the red light off, please? It's hurting his pelvis. No wait that's a skull; is it his?

"You swarthy bag of dicks! I'll have your head when you wake up! OW! Your stupid lovely brilliant whore of a ship has hidden the telepathic transducer! Where in Sepulchasm is it and why are we idling?"

My, but that yelling is unpleasant.

Humming softly, he tunes out the transmission from his outer ears and focuses on his oftimes greyish cravat and his heartsbeat and his lips.

They are tingling- but that's what you get when you land on your spine after falling through the eye of a Museum. Well he is fairly certain he isn't a camel. Although the golden curls do give that impression, he recalls being told.

And it's The Museum, isn't it? How queer, to return here again.

He opens his eyes; just the sight of the bright rubble-filled land before him serves as good a buffer as any, blocking out the rest of the distracting noise. To his right, however, there is the rushing of water, a great big water, as an ocean or a bay. Or perhaps a swimming pool.

He might even be trying to think, he reasons, as he sits upright and wiggles the things with nails.

_Oh yes, those are hands- good to know, good to know, _he thinks to himself. Ah yes, thinking is good again. He ought to do more of it, once he's out.

Water in a Museum, he muses as he picks his way along a chunky side of ceiling with beef. Or is it plaster? He's the _Lady of Charlotte_.

There are pictures; pictures, portraits, sculptures, dioramas, coffins, fanes and pyramids and tombs, all immortalized like thick paint on a canvas. Some of them are made of paint, actually. Some are made of water… some are made of dreams. There's a framed banana-peel, somewhere, hidden among the endless Impressionist Rassilons and Expressionist Others. No love for Omega?

He stares at no particular piece, grinning at no particular thought as he trundles along. A greenish bluish brownish coat, the round buttons candid and large beneath a velveteen lapel, flaps softly against a patterned, usually silver vest. A sometimes silverish cravat. A white dress shirt. Not a bit smartish, on the whole; no, it's rather a lot rash. Still, so very sharp! And sporting!

A bell sounds from somewhere.

All around, Not-Flesh squeals in the dark.

He'll wear this sleeping lion's skin for now, he reasons, reaching into the lovely land of velvet for the portable satellite.

After all, he can't have the bloody monkeys in his dream, now can he?

He waves it like a sword of light. George Lucas, if sane, would be pleased; at least he ought to be. In any case, the apes in their corners, their shadows, their mislabeled janitor's cupboards, they scatter, their mouths dripping that insufferable acid foam of knowledge upchucked and chewed and undigested. As always, it comes in colors; the blood of iron, of sunlight, of chlorophyll and crystal. Of sky and water. Of love and space and time. Of missed flights and predestination. Of bookends.

Rainbows of angst.

He could and ought to write a kiddy's book, when he awakes. But his sweet, blind seer of a brainchild would only be shat on by the apes, and suffer from high temperatures.

The sad thing is, he well and truly never ever even means any harm when he puts his foot in.

Once the wily things have retreated, he descends a set of stairs and goes on, down into the belly of the Museum.

Concrete pillars and yellow lines and emptiness. The dark is thick here, yet not even ignorance dwells. What is down here, forsooth? What is down here?

"Hrm," he says aloud, scratching his delicate chin. "It's the Supposed Former Car Park of the Apes, not _DeLovely_. Obviously I'm in the wrong film. And I still need to see that, by the way."

No echo.

"Oh now that's disturbing. At least it would be if I had never not heard an echo before. Hello? Is anyone there?"

Nothing. He should be used to this by now.

"Nobody? Is this the wrong Giant's Cave? Shall I call up a tempest from the aether? I remember that time warp- it was all the rage on Hitchemus."

No answer.

Still he walks, softly plodding through the darkness with his oversized penlight held high, daring the damn monkeys to play Silly Buggers. But wait. The sound of sniffle-snuffling pervades. He draws nearer, smelling a little girl's briny tears. Thoughts pool in his head, and some of them come out through his lips. He's always found it severely humorous.

"And is that the sound of precious surf, buffeting chocolate rocks with waves of cream? I tell you straight, don't call the cat; she'll lick the ocean dry and there'll be none for me."

More snuffling, and closer. But no answer. He continues, rambling desperately. When kiddies cry, it's like the glass shards he can't be bothered to tweeze from his fingers have found a vein and happily gone to ground in China, having found a two-hearted frog to torture. So his reasons are selfish, really.

"You know, they don't make sea salt like they used to, and even less like they ought. It makes the soup taste fishy."

He blinks.

Nothing, as he expects.

He blinks again; still nothing.

Why does he expect anything at all?

He blinks again, holding his eyes closed against change, just to see if maybe.

When he finally opens his eyes, the world is indeed, different. Different in that there is rising tide where there was concrete, dust and marble before, and a jagged hole behind him. Down on the rocks below, there is a small form, bawling insults at the sea.

The air tangles fingers in his gold curls as he climbs down, and he remembers, absently, belatedly, his fear of heights.

Of course the blinking doesn't matter.

It never does.


	15. Chapter 14 Winterbound

Chapter Fourteen: Winterbound

Safe in his Citadel room, the Terrorist frees his hand from his long gray glove and sighs.

There are far too many wily people about, and he has no wish to get on the wrong side of any of them. Until he's ready. Then it'll be fun.

A sharp pain erupts like a nuclear cloud in front of his shoulder-blade as he flops down on his plain white bed. He's jarred the wound again. Idiot. As he tries to reach into the dresser for his latest hit in a long line of fast-heal patches, there comes a knock at the door.

Rap.

Rap.

Rap.

Rap.

"You fool! Get in here!"

He shoves the bear mask in the drawer and instantly shortens his blond hair, quick and dirty like. Did he remember to take the things off? The stupid-looking hose with the floppy boots?

But the person who enters his room is not who he thought it would be.

"It must be terrible, being separated from your stubble for this long, Kos', just for me," Flamina tells him, reaching out with white arms to take his clean cheeks before she's crossed the room.

Her fingers reach as she moves; her flesh touches his. For a moment, he is back there, standing in House Oakdown's fields, the red grass so bright it burns the retinas. He remembers that, when the grass finally blooms, the sweet violet flowers fly up and fill the air with their silent strains. His father called it the Third Sunrise.

"What are you doing here?" He makes no effort to stammer the words, for, on any other's lips, they would be like a prayer against evil. That tee-shirt's in his wardrobe, somewhere. He thinks he might have shown it to her in what suddenly seems like another life, because the woman standing before him is nothing like the girl-thing he's been courting. And yet, she is exactly all of her.

"Be not afraid, my lover," she moans at his ear, nipping the flesh there, "Theta Sigma says to tell you I need my present now. He said, 'If he doesn't believe you, tell him, _Lucy Saxon_.'"

He fights the urge to stagger- but he's not even standing up.

"You're in with him then. So be it. The box is on the nightstand."

But she shakes her head, white bun trickling a thousand tiny braids like snow behind her. "No Koschei- he said it has to be by your hand."

His own head shakes now, but he straightens and gets the rectangular box from beside his bed. It's wrapped in silver. There's a luxurious, crunchy bow. How like his old friend, to play psychologist in absentia.

"Here you are, pet," he whispers, covering her hand with his as he lets the box slip from his fingers and into his.

Before she twists the strange little ring on her finger, she looks up, a question in her eyes. "What name for you, my love? What title, if not for Rassilon's meddling?"

He answers without hesitation.

"The Engineer."

But she is gone.


	16. Chapter 15 TheTemptationOfStAnthony1945

Chapter Fifteen: The Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1945

The red converse catches her in the ribs.

Flaminarixodaparcaftion flies unhappily into a wall that should not have been where it was. She can feel six-sided holes in the substance of the barrier, and an orange-ish light gleams faintly. It confuses her.

The leg wearing the converse draws back, ready to strike again, cool and mechanical. And utterly aflame with rage.

She flinches, closes her eyes and waits. But instead of a blow, a wind rushes beside her, brushing her face. Because a voice cuts her attacker off.

"Koschei!"

The single spoken word is harsh, yet gentle, every syllable possessed of an untenable need to wrench things. This, this is the voice of the Doctor, if a bit trembled and rasped, no matter the body.

He gains strength as he straightens on the TARDIS grates, oh yes, this must be the TARDIS because the Eye above the exit isn't on her anymore.

"Traitor!" she spits. But her body is sideways. The saliva just courses down her chin in a little clear trail of embarrassment. And plops down between the grate holes, frying in the underworks.

Her Koschei drags his foot back, the toe of his converse bumping like a skipped stone on the grates as he moves to kick her again.

The Doctor is the only thing holding him back, quite literally, because without his steadying hand, the other Time Lord would slip to the grates again. He's weak for some reason. The two of them, together... at the party, too. It does make sense. But the Doctor is affected, so it must have been the Master who parallel parked the TARDIS near the exit.

"…you disguised a TT capsule as a storage cupboard?" she asks, injecting incredulity while she looks around the console room, committing everything to memory.

"She won't let you fly her, sweet child," the Doctor says, pushing himself up. His tweed jacket is rumpled; his bowtie undone. He staggers to the console and just leans. "… she thinks you need a spanking. But that's all right; she thinks that about me most days."

He's looking at her as though he expects her to believe him, Flamina realizes as she shifts one knee out from under her rump and sits up a bit. She glares up at the Master, who is, strikingly, standing between the Doctor and herself. She wipes her chin with her white silk sleeve. "Why do you care about this animal, Koschei? He tried to burn us! He killed his own children. Why did you save him?"

Just a sigh at first. Then, "…you brainless chit. He did it so everyone else's children wouldn't die in the flames of Rassilon's _glory_! Uhg! What do you think would have happened if Rassilon had succeeded with his Final Sanction? There would have been nothing left BUT Gallifrey! And then it would have gone poof, too. Think think think you little fool!" he turns, his bright eyes shifting wildly as he follows the readouts of instruments. "The Doctor doesn't have all day."

The Doctor smiles, then slides down the center column like a thrown piece of meat. "The temporary stay against the chaos infection I gained by trapping myself between two bodies is gone, because Nurse Ratchett here pulled me out of limbo. The TARDIS can't help me, because entropy and time are like apples and oranges; they don't interact or compare in a way we can resonate with coherently. So… oh dear. Here I go again. Déjà vu."

He slides down further, and the Master moves to settle him on the floor, gentling him like a sick child.

Dust is flowing from the Doctor's left tear duct and trickling off into the console room's self-contained atmosphere.

"I think you.. ought to show her…" he murmurs softly, closing his eyes and sinking onto his front. His lips smush against the grates, just up to the point where they meet the thick glass bottom.

"Fine, fine! Just don't stay like that! You'll get waffles!"

The Master sounds frightened, and the Doctor wants to smile for him, but all he can manage is to blow the air from his lungs.

"Oh that's brilliant. We're fucked and you make farting noises."

"…Master, please! I'm dying here…"

Flamina feels like a doll. This is unreal. She's sitting in the TARDIS with the man she killed and the man she wants to kill. How is it then, that neither one is dead? How came the blood between two killers thread? And… she trails off, her poetry forgotten for sudden curiosity. What is the Master pulling out of the Doctor's pocket?

A gasp escapes her at the silver glint. Her lover's mask! The Master has it. Has he had it all this time?

"You killed him? I haven't seen him in ages. So that's where he got to- my sword, my Terrorist. There is no point to my lives then."

She draws a shard of glass, long and wicked, from her bodice.

"You know, I thought you almost loved me till you did this," the Master says softly, licking his tongue along the mask's carved rim and taking a step. "I know I almost loved you. But really now," he shakes his head, slowly at first, then more vigorously, until a vicious crown of dirty whitish blondish hair is falling around him. As he sets the mask on his face, his cheeks ungrow their stubble and lose a bit of fat along the bones. His appearance is changed, and so he finishes his sentence. "… who but a woman could keep space between her breasts. I know if I was a girlie, I'd hide _my_ trans-dimensional pockets there." He grins cheekily, then adds, "Give us a kiss?"

Her hand fits perfectly across his face, slapping the mask from his fingers and drawing a line of orange-red blood across the bridge of his nose.

A grin and groan from the Doctor, who by now is on the floor. He picks up the mask, preparing himself for the effort of speech. "Will you two say I Do already? We still have to send her back in time to get the Hand from you!"

The Master blinks. "What? What are you on about? What the hell did you…" He looks at the mask. Then he looks at Flamina. "You shit! I could have killed her!"

"But you didn't. Oh, Master, really…" Throwing off the ruse of weakness, the Doctor squints one eye, then pushes himself to his feet. With his free hand, he takes out some sort of scanner from his famous pockets and waves it over her chest until it beeps. "Oh yep, it's there! I'd suggest drawing straws, but…" He motions to the pile of dust in a baggie sitting on the console room floor. "I've already had a go. Help me hold her, would you?"

Her eyes snap wide as she follows his finger. Surely he can't mean… but then she is writhing in the Master's grip. Soon, her arms are tied before she can level the big shard more than an arm's length. It drops to the floor.

To his infinite surprise, the Master still finds her quite the prettiest frying chicken he's ever seen.

The Doctor breathes a muffled sorry as he stuffs a sock puppet in her mouth. Her eyes are full and on him, dilate saucers brimming with the promise of pain.

"Blinovitch is a bore," says the Master thoughtfully as he produces a pair of tongs and stuffs them down her bodice. "If I win the next election, can we abolish it?"

"No. Unless you particularly want to be reincarnated as a chronovore."

"I see your point. Or worse, an Eternal. Gods they're annoying. No sense of humour."

"I agree completely."

"…?... you have a tone. Have you met them more than once?"

"Do not. Have not. Bleahh!"

Their hold on her arms does not slacken, though, no matter how much they gabble on.

Has it really only been an hour? It's so hard to tell with TARDISES.

Regardless, Flamina does not like this notion of theirs; and, being fervently against it, she continues to squirm, writhing like an eel in a petticoat. Her eyes pop like rotten cantaloupe, nice and purple and gooey. _Well, forget the gooey,_ the Doctor thinks to himself, cringing every time the Master delves deeper into the woman's oddly-situated private trans-dimensional storage… place. He just can't watch. He can't. It's not decent. He knows River would though, so he does.

And the Master persists. He ruffles and scrunches and squeezes and twists, digging about between her breasts. With a pair of cold metal kitchen tongs. Serves her right for being such a… Her endowments jiggle two and fro for a few moments, then…his hand retreats. The cheap metal tongs hold in their grasp an egg-shaped stone, set in a torque. The torque and stone are placed in a special box containment, far away from her.

Her face turns white immediately; it's as if her blood has turned to chalk-water. Her veins stand up in blue lines like reverse riverbeds across a map of dead fish skin.

"Look at her, Kos'," the Doctor murmurs, reaching to gently brush away a strand of her white hair. "She's fighting it. But it's had her a long, long time. I may have to go in."

"Do it." the Master says softly.

In the empty air, the only sound the Doctor can hear is the grinding of teeth. And they're not his. He looks down at Flamina. His body can feel, instinctively, the tremor in her systems. They're shutting down.

Her fingers are quivering, trembling with palsy like feathers in a cyclone.

"Are you certain, Koschei? It will be the rest of her, next. Be absolutely cert-…"

"DO IT! Just don't either of you bloody die! I can't take this! It's bollocks, all of it!"

The Master's fist slams against the base of the console, leaving a dent. And far above that dent, where the Master's eyes aren't looking yet, there is a hidden screen with a very important date.

"Mustn't be late for that one…" the Doctor mutters under his breath. Then he blows out his cheeks and risks a glance at the Master. But Koschei's eyes are elsewhere.

The Doctor's smile as he touches Flamina's forehead is the same tired mask of pain and regret. He knows the shape of that mask, knows it in his bones. To the quarks. But the Master's face, reflected in the glass of that hidden screen as he stares down at the only two people he's ever loved?

He never thought to see_ himself_ there.

So before he leans over her, he settles his own weight first, sinking down beneath so he can pull her into his lap.

"If I don't come round when she does, don't come in and get me. Just… tell her I'm not a morning person or something. Miles to go, and what. We need to find that Myrtlegull. He needs to be close when Flamina's future self retrieves the box for us. I'm dying to know why we have to send her back to do it… But anyway, the Bird, the Myrtlegull. I sort of need him."

No answer.

The quality of mercy seems strained, in that each quick, precise movement is somehow so horrifically slow, but eventually the Doctor removes his coat and tosses it aside. Then his suspenders. Then his bowtie and shirt. With delicate fingers, now he slides Flamina's silk gown down over her torso, revealing her bare shoulders, her neck, the curve of her ribs. Finally, he takes her in his arms and gentles her body against his chest.

The Master understands this; they need to be in as much physical contact as possible. The Doctor is good at what he does. Still, he worries they might not…

"Breathe with me, Flamina," the Doctor says, touching her face. "There's a girl! Can I come in?"

okay guys... I need to know I feed you enough. Do I talk to you enough in these, or would you like me to maybe say things more often?


	17. Chapter 16 Countinghouse Blues

Chapter Sixteen: Countinghouse Blues

"As you well know, as of this morning I am Cardinal, merely Cardinal, so I assume no responsibility for such matters, Lord Pasmodius! There is nothing to be gained in pointless wastage."

Rassilon slams his fist down on the table, scattering two first year Academy students and a cloud of Namaste Nerada to opposite ends. One of them- a mouse-y Dromiean, he notices, had been carrying a large book. Pasmodius would never be foolish enough to pass information right in front of him, would he?

Would he?

The Old Man is still seated, still watching- still munching on that disgusting seacress sandwich and dropping bits of long white cress on the floor; to presume otherwise would be like popping up at the GCIA and mentioning any of the three men he wished to rub out by name.

"Well I think you should! The Library funds are dwindling! Much more of this Post-War Effort nonsense and the Namaste Nerada may have to turn vegetarian!" Pasmodius taps his long branch-y finger on the rather plain, whitish wood.

"And do you know why we cannot afford to allow the Archive to appropriate more funds, Pasmo?"

Pasmo blinks; a mote falls. He rubs his face, wrinkles rolling everywhere as though he's overturned a pail full of small sausages. Finally, his fingers eject from the mess.

"My dear Rassilon, without an Archive, how can we teach our students? How can we adjust to the rigors of maintaining the Restoration if we cannot educate the next generation adequately to avoid the mistakes of our shared past?"

Rassilon scoffs at this display. What is the old man getting at? He's never been one for politics- he just wants what's his. Nothing else matters. The Restoration is a fool's errand. No reason for him to stick around once the manure flies. Between the Terrorist and the Lady Flamina, the Doctor and the Master, and the Old Man and the Sea, Gallifrey is going right back where it came from. Obscurity. He holds no love for the planet of his birth. They are not his people anymore.

He laughs as he waves away the Old Man's glare. If he is to die, so be it. But it won't be here, at that man's hands.

He does not see Pasmodius staring after him as he departs.

But when two thin, leathery fists ball in purple fabric, clenching so hard that blood runs over the gnarled fingers, even Pasmo is surprised.

"Good thing you sent that mouse off with the book then, isn't it, you old tosser? Can I play? I do love a good scavenge."

Looking up into the unexpected and, wondrously placid, dark gaze of the Lord President, Pasmodius merely frowns.

Does he imagine it, or is the Master's hair a shade lighter? And furthermore, is the discrepancy mistake or a'purpose?

He shakes himself, outwardly because that is who he is, of late.

Of course he doesn't imagine it.

After all, Patrex isn't a Chapterhouse known for its imagination.

But Rassilon is a curious man, if curiosity suits his needs.

So he waits.

He is jovial, even.

The Lord President, his hair intriguingly more blonde-white than it had been two weeks previous, grabs his hand, pressing his finger into Pasmodius' palm until pain crawls outward over the nerves. He's writing letters.

_Get Box. Important. You-know-who has it. Time-travel. TARDIS. Knock. Leave. Ship hidden. Exit corridor. This date and time. Doctor asked. The Master._

What's the matter, Old Man?" the man in his old robes groans, "…can't you bloody read?"

Then he's gone.


	18. Chapter 17 Hansel's All Alone

Chapter Seventeen: Hansel's All Alone

"We are so fucked. We are all-hail-the-great-Saint-Barkus-of-Quilylon fucked! And you just… "

The Master squeaks, feeling like some poor sod in coach as a red fiberglass rod falls on him from a sudden overhead hatch.

"Spiteful bitch," he murmurs at the TARDIS. "What in the blazing, bloody hells am I supposed to do with this thing?"

he raises his hand, pulls himself up from where he's been sitting and watching the Doctor and Flamina's therapy session on the other side of the console.

Krik-krak.

He slows, then stills.

Again the sound, fissuring through the thick glass floor.

Oh shit.

Krik-krak-krik.

Kriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiik-a-krak-krik-krik-krik-krik-krik-krakkity.

Krak.

Krik-SPOOSH! Krak-a-krak-krak.

He can't grab on; the floor breaks beneath his bum like a collapsing iceberg, sending up jagged sections of glass that look more like airplane wreckage than a walking surface. Naturally, as he dangles and looks, he notices the floor beneath the Doctor and Flamina is still perfectly sound…

"Course not," he murmurs. His foot is hanging precariously like bait over the visible bits of temporal engine, all gears and clicking teeth and glowy machine. He imagines the grind of those gears to be a line of clinging elephants, swinging loose trunks and clutching tails as their matriarch trumpets mightily at the attempts of a young buck to stall the line and show his worth.

And speaking of line…

He holds the strange rod between his feet, trying to thread the nylon coming out of the reel mechanism into each eye along the tapering length. There's a locked lever on the console, just above. If he can get the fool thing threaded… make enough loops to hang for suspension so he can climb up…

The glass is biting into his hand, cutting into him like breaks in the frost on a window. His blood is running over his wrist. He'll lose feeling soon. But if he does he'll be prime ground Time Lord in those gears. He's sure the TARDIS wouldn't hesitate.

He's also sure… that he could just let go.

He could just… let go.

But he doesn't have time to think it through as the glass slices through to the white on his middle finger.

He yelps, shuddering even though he's endured so much worse than this. Hot, angry tears well, and as he looks up at the Doctor and Flamina through the wet, he starts tying the first knot in the nylon.

In a few minutes, he's managed to get three loops over the lever. His injured hand is numb and dripping. Much more and he might lose it. Ah well. He and the Doctor can swap jokes, once everything normalises.

…normal? Really? Idiot. What normal?

As he works, he hears another sound. It isn't new, but it isn't old, either.

Rap.

Rap.

Rap.

Rap.

Thank Rassilon for that bastard lying up there on the glass. His lazy arse can get the door.

Laughter wants to shake him so he lets it… there are still four more knots to tie- he's done the rest and thrown the loops over. Time to test if the line will hold his weight.

He hooks the reel's handle in one of the loops on his jeans and grabs the glass with his good hand, slicing the fingers.

But the glass is already covered with blood; he scrabbles- his eyes goggling like he's a toad being squeezed as he flails-a fly in gossamer.

His body flips- it's sort of funny, but he's not laughing now. All the blood is rushing to his head because he's hanging upside down.

Oddly enough, he feels calm, like an amoeba.

It's a struggle to look up, but when he does, he notices a pair of boots and dark grey trousers staring down at him. These, of course, are topped by that ridiculous tweed jacket. The tinted dress shirt. The bowtie. Floppy hair follows, then a strong chin and peridot eyes that hold half the world.

Finally.

"Are you busy?" the Doctor says with suspect softness, edging himself away from the mountain range of glass. His squarish, long fingers unconsciously scratch his stomach for a half-second, then retreat into the air and waggle limply. He must look little more than a neurotic knot of nerves as he peers into the depths, the way he's standing so still and yet not. But he adds another sentence or four as though he owns a shoehorn, affecting just a snatch of plaintiveness with thin lips and a trifle less melanin. "No? Good, because, um… I have something to tell you, before I help you right yourself. But you're not going to like it very much, which is why I have to tell you now, while you're tied up… you know, because… it's sort of, ah, um, well-this thing I've done, it has to settle in, so to speak."

A swallow. He's swallowing, out of reflex.

The Master stares at him, the blood racing through his skull and pounding his brain stem because of the angle of his neck. Then his eyes flicker over to where Flamina… her shape is absent from the console silhouette. How… no. It's got to be the rush of blood to his brain.

"For how long?" he says, blinking. In the back of his mind, calculations are running, running. Running.

_But she's not,_ quips his traitor hindbrain. _She's not running._

The Doctor is a scarecrow in rapture for a moment, weaving like wheat there far away from the black typewriter keys of a Victorian rubbish bin console, far away from roundeled walls that beam with the color of honeycomb. He hasn't picked his coat up yet, and he's in the middle of the floor, just… standing.

His big hands rifle through his hair, as though he's a drunk farmer looking for a mouse in the dark. With a shotgun. A toothpick? A prayer. All the same thing, really.

"Everything's… all right, Koschei. Just… I'm sorry, I can't help you up. But I'll get someone who can."

The Master doesn't see it, but the Doctor's hands stroke the inside moulding of the double doors before he leaves.

Where the hell does the bastard he think he's going?


	19. Chapter 18 Rabbit Hole Podunk

Chapter Eighteen: Rabbit Hole Podunk- The Boy's Used To It

_Flashback to Flamina's dream, part one._

The Doctor reaches out a green velvet stick of an arm, searching for another rock to grasp.

The rocks are wet. They writhe with the slime of Gallifrey's Northern Sea. He's long forgotten the name, but the briny stench of bird dung is something to be remembered at all times.

He feels his red, flat, slightly female and altogether feline lips twitch in an involuntary smile. If he goes on any more rambling muses he'll grow a long scarf, like in the old days.

Just a few more metres... feet… lengths of space… as he quibbles with himself over which definition of span is the most accurate, his fingers find another slippery purchase, warm and wet, just like the first. Hold on.

He lifts his fingers to his face. Reddish orange, and so very not nice. Not slime? Bloody cliffs, and not slime? How many people has she murdered? Ah, he feels as though he will forever be saying it- _sorry for the mess I've left. _That's why he's here, isn't it? Obligingly, he wipes the fluid on his coat and keeps going down, although not in the way he expects – the rock that was so sure before is wiggling, back and forth in its hide-y-hole like a little lost predator. One crack and woosh! He's skidding again. He pulled the rock, of course; he really can't help himself. So it's really no surprise to him when he begins tumbling too, head to rock and foot to head and butt cheeks to consequences, down and down and down. There's a healthy trail of slimy muddy bits clouding up behind him. Fondly, he remembers diving lessons, and decides to…

He skids down until his coat tails are over his face, and his bum to follow. Smeared with sand, he dusts off and stands up to a new sight- a cave. And the girl is there.

Her young, oh young face; it's like a virgin's white mask at the evening carnivales of old. She suffers to stare at him with bright eyes full of a sense of intrusion before she, bright blue-lavender eyes and white braids and pensive muscles all spring away, to safety. To the cave.

And who is he to break that silence? It isn't his. He's not here to take today, he's here to treat. As a physician. The magick man. The wizard who feeds the hero daydreams until he's wise enough to make his own.

Naturally, he catches himself mumbling, but only after the fact. Naturally. Fight, flight, red, delight. Curds and whey and petrichor. Perhaps his brain stem is due for a tweaking next regeneration?

He's still mumbling as he moves closer to the mouth of the cave.

"… rather like releasing raised pigeons back and forth, wouldn't you expect?"

No answer. He expects nothing, and hopes for…

"I said, my dear, that it's rather like releasing raised pigeons! There's a faulty sense of accuracy all around!"

Shrip shrip.

Nothing but a tiny stirring in the depths. Perhaps soup was being made? Well, judging by the sound, either it's a pot set to boil or a pike being sharpened… resourceful girl. And really, it sounds nothing like a pot.

The Doctor is silent for some time after that, listening instead of talking at the almost pleasant noises of scrapings from the inside of the cave. He finds the grayish, hole-y lump of a newly-dead sponge by the water's edge and puts it in his pocket. (It looks like an old cheese.) He gathers drift from the beach. Snaps a finger to light it. Oh, the glory of fire. The burning vision. Staring into the flame he has made in the circle of stones he gathered himself and set on the median between his bit of borrowed beach and the threshold of the cave, he lapses into a kind of sleep as he watches and waits.

He nods off, like any self-respecting old goat. Stubborn too, because he really hates himself…

Before he can make sense of it all again, a wooden thing thrown from the darkness of the cave's heart hits him in the head, knocking him onto his bum and replacing the sand he scrubbed off.

He stoops to pick it up, but it bites him instead and hops backward.

"And what are you?" he asks, fascinated by the shape of a bird made of wood that is now flapping its wings at him.

"I know you, don't I?" the Doctor murmurs, as he watches wooden wings beat the sand up into a flurry of gold, revealing seven tiny blackish bluish reddish crustaceans with big pincers and little claws and six legs and antagonizing little beady eyes on stalks.

It's little Macra! Oh how adorable!" he says, as the seven crabs begin to grow taller than him. Their pincers soon tower over even the cave. But of course, carapace can be broken much more easily than rock.

Possibly miffed at himself for being entirely too valid in such a shifty environment, the Doctor brushes with indistinct skill at his green velvet coat, then turns aside from the whole sordid affair to stare at the bird, who says nothing. _Worse than an Auton. No, wait, they speak. Good point, _ he thinks.

And then?

Heady for a spot of encore he runs a hand through his sand-weighted curls and turns orator, declaring loudly to the whole strange world of beach and cliff and rock and sand and cave, "Well, would you look at this- I'm the Brave Little Tailor! And I'm quite certain you'd like a nice lemon-butter sauce with that."

Then he steps aside from the lurching giant crabs, grabs a piece of driftwood he hasn't used yet. He sticks it in the fire, hunting a hot spot. The drift alights, fire crawling like really fast slime-mould growth over the dry wood.

Throwing his torch arm about as though he's drunk at the pitch, he waves the flame over the seven heads of the Macra and smiles, wishing he had one of Fitz' cigarillos to puff aimlessly on. Had it been cigarillos?


	20. Chapter 19 Set Piece

Chapter Nineteen: Set Piece

As he pulls the TARDIS doors together, closing her to the outside world, his nostrils flare, his olfactory nerves suddenly thick with the scent of full roses heavy with hip and swaying in a soft breeze. A rich, fruity flavour lades the air; his body feels as though a weight has dropped upon it. Breath comes at a premium to his several lungs, and his feet feel suckled by the black, oozing peat of an unseen bog. Taking strength from the hard old wood, the feel of striated grains and whorls and knots painted so blue beneath his fingers, he listens.

"Lord Other," says a new voice. Feminine… tinged in scented oil and soaked in the perfume of promises. Soft outside, sharp inside. Like a mouse. Or a cybermat, depending on your fetishes.

He refuses to reply to this. He will not. She is trying to get a rise, surely. But maybe he will speak to her if she asks the right Question. His body does not answer.

A laugh, like the tinkle of tiny bells. No. He will not give in. He hasn't imagined the title or the roses.

"Pasmodius sent me, Doctor- I have a book for you. He said you requested it."

An olive hand holds out a thick volume. The pages are flimsy with age and appear rotten, rising higher between the dry brown leather bindings than an entire hand held palm up. Big book. Slightly stinky- perhaps some mould has got in…

"Of course I did," he muses, as he takes the book, flipping to a page. He launches then, into quiet recitation. It is a passage he knows quite well. "When the rose dies, one makes perfume," he reads, running a thumb down the once-oiled vellum, "… and there are always roses somewhere, usually grey ones. The kind with full, fruited blossoms- best for tilting at windmills… or the clearing of nostrils if one wishes to avoid the smell of burning flesh and ash."

"Doctor? Are you all right?" There is that olive hand again, settling on his shoulder like a shroud. He's had enough of those.

How dare she pretend to it. How dare her!

The Doctor turns. He looks into the deep amber-brown eyes with hints of forest, reflecting on comely flesh worn like clay slip on a dumpy statue that's trying too hard to look pretty and just… smiles. The set of his teeth does not invite welcome, and he does not let… damn him. He desires to know, even after all of this. Is she smiling?

"What do you call yourself, child? Haven't seen you before."

The thing called woman, infernal creature, grins as she answers, "Nemontiarla. I'm a drab little Dromiean.", like a child caught out for stealing butter mints.

_Well,_ he thinks sullenly, _butter mints are perfection- as a rule, she's no right to them._

_He sticks a hand in the pocket of his trousers, because his tweed jacket is still on the console room floor. A white bag comes out in his hand, smelling of the book by now. On purpose, maybe. He doesn't know anymore._

"_Care for a purple jelly baby, you mouldy old witch?" he grits through a tiger's grinning teeth. Ah, Hitchemus._

Oh if only he could. In one fast movement, he grabs her hand instead, pulling her against the TARDIS doors. "Now we can both talk shop without the neighbors being nosy. We wouldn't want to let on, would we? Someone might sense you." His smile is a sneer- he leans in close. "You're arrogant. You've stretched yourself thin."

The librarian pauses in her assessment, green-gold-brown eyes taking in the slumped, almost hunched stance of the man standing before her. "Fair enough," she says, and begins to recount her day outside the stacks.

"That book- it's something old Pasmo asked me to find- a First Edition Histories of Gallifrey, Unabridged. Can you guess where I found it?"

Oh please. Really now.

"Somewhere in the vicinity of His Lordship Rassilon? I heard he re-enacted _Aristophanes' Speech _from_ Plato's Symposium_ in the main passage. Something about a tower of books falling on his venerable head?"

"I was carrying too many, and took an opportunity. You know, to relieve myself of some small burden, and him of some of his. Leastwise, the rendition was something of a mockery, coming from that mouth. Your version was much better."

"Don't change the subject. I wasn't talking about myself. We must blame the inevitable course of his actions. In any case, try asking for help. So you're not a god after all. Just a college girl with aspirations."

"Ah, what is it your little monkeys say? Pot, kettle?"

"That's different."

Her laugh rises in her throat at the sight of him.

Damn it. Why does he even bother anymore?

"Enter my TARDIS the usual way and help the Master with his fishing pole. Say you were chased into a storage cupboard by a Kumlien's Gull named Lucy Saxon. That ought to get his attention. But then again…" he laughs too, for a moment- but his eyes are frozen celery, lysed by ice crystals and no good for eating.

He knocks four times, then presses the silver mask and the golden ring he's just taken off into her fingers. Walking away, he adds, "… you know how thick he can be. Be sure and tell him it's not really a mask, perhaps mention how _handy_ a disguise can be when you're out on a fishing trip, intent on avoiding your wife."


	21. Chapter 20 And I Not Troilus

Chapter Twenty: And I Not Troilus, And You Not Cressida

"Hullo, Pasmo!"

The Old Man looks up from his dark desk, and from the great work of translating Marnal's _Diatribe on the Naming of Constellations._ His tree branch fingers slide across the black cover, obscuring the stars that shine from its hard darkness.

"You're late. For a very important date. What did you do with that librarian?" Pasmo's voice is crisp, leathery. Even. It's an effort of ages, tempered by regret buried so deep beneath purpose no eye can bespeak it.

"Funny- that's the kind of misty receive I'd expect from Old Blue Eyes down in the Nemean Lion's den," says the Doctor, with a soft sigh that might have been sorrow, if he hadn't been smiling. "Regardless of the Fates' intent, that shimmer dulls your girlish complexion. I'd get rid of it and save up my frequent fliers for a nice olive tone instead."

A hint of trauma, at last. Ancient blue stones stare out from merely old grey slate, and meet green ice at the usual point on the Doctor's face. The man's gaze is colder than he's ever seen it. Were it a fraction more chill, a touch more frozen, even he, Rassilon, who claimed the name and face of Old Pasmodius, would have shivered. Could easily have trembled. And he, who had never been a superstitious man, would be the most superstitious of all.

"And whey from a stone means peace for all." Pasmo murmurs, grinning from one side of his lips as he savoured the taste of contest flooding his mouth. "My Lord Doctor, I remember that line- you used it in your first year dissertation against genetic modulation. At the time, I thought it was trite, as I recall."

There then occurs above the Doctor's chin an odd, thin smirk of those child's lips, pointed at the ends just so and in the middle, to defame any conquering heroes.

When the Doctor speaks again, this time, Pasmo remembers something cold. "Now that's so very funny, really, being as that I don't recall you being there. I remember Pasmo' being there though, clear as a bell and twice as senile. He must be dropping gingko like an acid freak, to be so sharp as you."

"That tone of yours… is a weakness _he_ never showed. Now go away."

"And what would that weakness be, exactly? Doubt as to the Absence of Malice? I seem to have heard something floating about the Citadel regarding how you disappeared for a few days… right about the time the Citadel's cell blocks were compromised. " The Doctor looks down, eyes suddenly flitting and hooded as he fiddles with the red line of his suspender. "There must have been time travel involved, wouldn't you say? I would check myself, but there are circumstances..."

He? Can't? A plump, sweet-nectared blossom of intrigue in the endless sand of existence. With an inward wonder flailing for release, dear old Pasmo plucks the flower. "Such as what, insolent boy?"

"Such as four beats where two ought to be, and a feminine grudge the size of Braxiatel's TARDIS." The Doctor muses as he crosses Pasmo's study to lean like a dirty transient on the old man's shelf. "Could the reason for your regret have something to do with a daughter, perhaps? I can easily imagine how you must see that unfortunate girl, Flamina, remembering your face when…"

One hand clutching a fistful of fabric out of sight beneath the big, warm lines of his desk, Pasmo considers the Doctor, his gaze much like a snake charmer recently availed of too many of his rupees at the open air market.

But the Doctor just smiles once and departs, calling back over his shoulder, "Well you know what they say… be careful which flowers you eat in the desert – don't eat the ones that rustle or you might wake up in a box with a swollen tongue. Or a stab wound, depending on your so-called relations."

My my my my my. And what to make of this?


	22. Chapter 21 La Dame a la licorne

Chapter Twenty-One: La Dame à la licorne,À mon seul désir

_Flashback to Flamina's dream, part two._

The Doctor watches as the wooden bird curls burled talons around a sea-polished stone.

The bird then grows, its body, perhaps cherry? scaling outward until it casts a shadow quite a bit larger than the cave behind it.

He can just see the outline of his fire's light across the carved and feathery rump, the flames flickering with hungry bloom as though they desperately want to roast something.

Unfortunately, the stone has grown as well… it too is bigger than the cave, and unlike the cave, it is not hollow. Nice and round and flattish at three stone and eight, it would be a decent skipper if the ocean wasn't so choppy. And he wasn't so small.

So he thinks for a moment, ignoring the bird's deafening shrieks… good thing his eardrums and everything else are constructs in this place of dreams. He turns to look at the bird, then sticks a hand in his pocket, pulling out the sponge. The bird crushes with its giant claw; fissures appear in the dappled grey surface. A trickle of water drips. Soon, a puff of fine rock dust spurts, and the bird delivers the blow that kills the poor rock dead. The Doctor claps, holding his hands so the bird's beady eyes cannot see the hand with the sponge. He squeezes the dead sea creature, and water is soon spurting over his fingers.

The bird shrinks to normal, frozen with fury as the Doctor takes up a stick and settles it on the fire. The light, however, is soon done for, for the bird flies up above the flames, beating his wings and screaming triumph. The wind blows across the burning driftwood, extinguishing the heat and light into tiny chunks, fragrant embers melting into pools of ash more grey than orange.

Sudden as a gnat on a horse, the bird flies at the Doctor, then veers at the last moment, an errant boomerang.

He is baffled. Why has this happened? Was he turning a certain way? Absent hearing brings a soft tinkling noise to mind, and he lifts his pocket watch to his face. Surely this was the reason? The gull-bird is above instead of below, and he sees an opening. He runs at the bird, throwing pebbles and sand he scoops up as he hops from rock to rock. Spying a large crag near the cave entrance, he runs for that when the bird begins to follow. He can hear the beating of its wooden wings- an oboe with the flu.

And once the gull is gaining, it's as he wanted. _Soon, bird, soon,_ he thinks, _when I reach the cliff I'll do for you._

He is atop the cave now; the gull is flying for his face, his neck perhaps. It means to eject him. But he keeps his fingers on his pocket watch, concealed under his coat.

Now he can see the wooden feathers, so lifelike they spread with the creak of old oaks as the bird draws nearer.

The eyes shine like polished wooden shooters as he steps aside just in time, revealing the glint of his pocket watch to the sun overhead.

The gull-bird passes by him, shrieking like a child, but its body coasts a straight line into the waves crashing against the back of the cave.

He jumps down just as the pitter of bare feet erupt from the cave entrance and cross the dead fire.

It is there that he lands, before the ash, in the mouth of the cave. The child cannot return to her sanctuary, so she sits herself down beside the fire and it grows light again. The Doctor joins her on the opposite side, a question on his lips, to which she brings a length of string from the ether and weaves it along her fingers in a cat's cradle.

The string in her hands becomes a box as she loops her fingers.

She holds it up for him to see, then loops again. This time, a crude bird, triangles for head and beak, and triangle wings.

She loops again, this time making triangles near her face, with her teeth on the string. The bird is flying.

She takes his fingers now and places them on some of the string, then loops again, using her thumbs this time. A circle between her hands, inside a box. It must be the Eye.

She weaves and loops again. The bird is broken, with one triangle wing held down. Had the box fallen on the bird? Must have been the crumbling wall he'd seen earlier.

She takes his finger again, places it on the bird, makes a loop. The bird becomes a triangle and two lines. A person perhaps? Yes- there are two loose loops for hair. Is she trying for curls?

She loops again. This time, another person, smaller, with only a couple of straight lines for hair. He guesses that it's her.

The scene changes again. She loops, and this time it's the box again, the hexagon in the middle. Then a third person, with a dagger, judging by the sharp isosceles at the right of his little square hand.

She pulls his hand to her again and places his fingers. She loops, and this time the dagger is bigger, and inside a box.

The Doctor takes her hands in his, patting them as he once had done for Susan.

Her arms tremble a little less, but still she tears the string from her fingers, ripping skin in little pink strips.

He looks away, but she rises with the string dangling bits of her still in her hands. She comes behind him, taps his shoulder. The string is wound around his eyes, over and over, until he cannot see.

Then he feels her smaller hand in his larger, guiding him into the cave's innards, and together they go into the darkness unlit by the light of the second fire.


	23. Chapter 22 Tiny Bubbles

Chapter Twenty-Two: Tiny Bubbles

The Assassin sits in his own rooms; the rooms of the Cardinal, now. His fingers flash about idly, thumbing papers. But then the documents with their red seals all slide to the floor. He leans back on his bed, dreaming of what to do once he's gone. Once he's free. Once he's no longer wearing Rassilon's face.

Now and again, he imagines himself on Hitchemus. They make good narcotics there, the illicit trade in drugs having established quite the underground machine, to be perfectly ironic.

It's been thousands of years since he's had a hit of Bliss.

The best thing was, unlike the monkeys and the cats, he wouldn't be bleeding from both ends after a few patches.

Nice little clean white patches. They stuck anywhere you wanted.

"Oh, my lady… my white lady… we'll be together soon…" he murmurs to the ceiling.

Redecorating after Borusa's sudden retirement had been painfully necessary, but worth it. There were bright colors of blue everywhere now, lines of green like a swipe of computer circuitry across the door, red woven rugs on the wooden flooring. Rassilon was merely Cardinal now, with no hope of ever regaining his ridiculously high status; he could afford to be spontaneous.

It reminds him of Hitchemus, like everything else didn't. That planet boasted thick jungles called the Bewilderness, full of old tech and the graveyards of promises, like any lost cause in the leaves.

The Doctor had been there, left his mark. Legend told he'd once called rain like lightning and flame like avarice, all to stop a teensy little war, a trickster dancing in the dark. That he'd played that now famous violin (called Kaku Inko by the cult that rose around it – they claimed it gained sentience once it left his hands) more quickly and more fluidly than Abaddon himself, so much that the strings curled and burst into flame, then snapped completely off. Such a pity. There was a recording still floating around- of course the Assassin had bought that for his collection. The man really should have got more praise for his performance.

But oh well; the Assassin would soon fix that empty feeling. For a dagger to the hearts brought better tears of pleasure than any adoring smile, didn't it?

It was a favour. He'd be doing him a favour.

Yes, a favour.

That girl, the one with white hair. Flamina. Her hair always made him think of his white lady.

But he hadn't seen her since the party… since he'd escaped the Eye. And that had been the day he'd done it,too.

Author's note: The concept of Bliss and the idea of a drug trade on Hitchemus are a part of my friend funtimevash's Fitzverse series on Live Journal. This chapter is a nod to you, Vashy! It suddenly clicked, what background I could give the Assassin! I could pay tribute to your story and fix a problem I'd been having with his believability. PERFECT. I hope it is suitable tribute.


	24. Chapter 23 A Hymn for Fatima

Chapter Twenty-Three: A Hymn for Fatima

Pasmo runs his thumb along the edges of the flattened sphere of silver lying like a touch under his folds of purple silk, feeling the cold of the metal against his skin. The ice in the medal reminds him of rain, that very rain. The rain that was falling when his unborn daughter...

Little freezing drops- they'd gone plink plink plink on the window glass outside his wife's room. The child had died inside her, and she soon after. He would forever curse the vicious harpy who had mote it be.

He remembers it, ah so well. With his hands against her mother's belly, he had promised her a daylight of two suns, free from that old time repression. He had promised her red grass and flowers and catsharks and gulls, silver mountains and cities of metal and crystal, all dwarfed by giant trees. Instead, she had received a penance that should have been his, what all of Gallifrey had not deserved. And from their Mother. She, the winged witch who defended her rotting nest atop the hill with her claws and her teeth and the spreading of her legs. As if the old ways were not immune to the power she would later claim was hers, once she'd been stripped of most of what she'd taken.

He hadn't wanted this.

But the rot was here, regardless. That someone like that ingrate could suddenly emerge from the stinking, eaten woodwork and usurp his place was evidence enough.

That meant…

It meant he'd failed.

Once, he had fooled himself by leaving Omega to die in the heart of Qqaba. Then, once the sacrificed star had been rammed into place, he had fooled himself again in sending his pets after the Other, the Other's granddaughter and her nurse, all his little assassins scurrying for witnesses like filthy rats after a scrap of bacon. Some had been foolish enough to lie; still others had claimed they'd never found the body- he'd taken care of them personally, a fact only one man still living knew, other than him. And that man.. he'd thought he'd taken care of, too. He would do for that man, this time.

So many things he'd thought he'd taken care of.

Plink, plink, plink plink.

The medal is warm now. His fingers, gnarled and frail, settle around the hammered metal round, feeling the smooth lines, the heat radiating in waves.

"Let me see her," he breathes, berating himself as the voice lock recognises the patterns in his deep voice and begins to open the medal in his hands, revealing tiny quiverings to the peripheral nerves in his digits while it clicks.

He feels a swaying, chattering flip of the little edge as it forms; his hands jump apart; the catch melts in and the hinge melts out and back, until the other side of the medal splays apart from its mate, the welcome of a clam. The glint of the inner machinery catches on his walls, and dances over the bookshelf where the Doctor was leaning. He can still see the elbow-patch-shaped void in the dust.

As he looks at the light, a figure forms, growing out of the shimmering, shallow depths of the medal's guts; the light forms a pyramid, ending above in a point so bright he might be forced to blink. He doesn't want to.

He doesn't.

And then she's floating in the air, no longer a point, but a promise. A gift the Other had given him, so long ago. She is an infant, smiling in her mother's arms.

He waits. She grows. Now she is seven years old, running through what might be red grass, chasing one of the little flying amphibians. A Chortlefrog.

Plink. Plink, plink.

He blinks; that reminds him, he ought to have had Omega recondition certain parameters in the autonomous nerve programming in the original Loom before he sent him to his death…

And now she is 20.

Her long hair is almost the color of bark, all curls at the ends and straight in the middle; her eyes are bright blue sky, with bits of pearly iridescence sprinkled in among the rods of her new irises. Her gaze is just beginning to settle. They'll know her permanent eye color soon.

He blinks again, making a decision this time.

She is fifty. Her long white hair is snow against her cheeks. She is not looking at him, now; the book in her hand is much more important. The cover reads, the Unabridged Histories of Gallifrey.

He blinks again.

This time, her lavender eyes are 120 years old. Ready to choose a Chapterhouse. Is that a flicker of red under her gown? So she has chosen already. She is laughing with him, laughing with him, no, well, yes, with him, but also, someone beyond him. The person with the…

Pasmo's hands quiver now as he folds his left hand over his right, closing the locket's mechanism, deactivating the tiny fluid catches and gears, the hinge and clasp. His daughter will sleep until the next time he wakes her.

Funny that, how the Other had never once claimed the Sight. But how else had he known to put such detail into the locket? How else? Unless… unless he'd known. Unless he HAD seen. Or been there, somehow.

He looks again through surer lenses on the shelf where the Doctor had leaned.

Plink. Plink, plink.

How had he ever been Rassilon? Suddenly he knows, knows that he will never be that man again.

For he _is_ just a man. _Just a man._

And today, that man is Pasmodius.

As for tomorrow, who can tell?

The Doctor had been right, he muses as he replaces the medal beneath his shift and robes. He was fond of the girl.

Once he has caught his breath, he will go and learn where she is, he decides, brushing a hand through his four remaining strands of shimmer-generated hair. And the Tomb of Rassilon is as good a place to start as any. That man… he must be dealt with.

But, tomorrow. Tomorrow.

After all, old men need their rest. One night is enough, to drain the water from the cup. Hopefully then, _they_ will be ready.

It's been a long time since old Pasmo's read tea leaves.


	25. Chapter 24 Alkahest and Azoth

Chapter Twenty-Four: Alkahest and Azoth

_Flashback to Flamina's dream, part three._

He can feel grains of cold sand under his feet.

His hand in hers, they are moving through the dark.

The walls of the cave, they seem… muffled somehow, maybe by something hanging on them… are there pictures of someone? Perhaps a mother? A father? Who knows, with the old regime gone.

"Hello!" And what's this then?

He admires the blindfold of string from afar in his own head, feeling a sort of kinship with the Blind Consort as the girl leads him farther into the heart of the rocky hole.

"It smells nice in here, like the sea. Do you dry flowers and put them in here?"

Of course he gets no answer; Her throat was ripped out a long time ago.

The rock grows deeper. Thicker. Soon he can no longer hear the crash of waves from outside.

What a place to live, for a little girl.

"This won't do at all," he murmurs, smelling dust. "Don't you have a maid or something? Candy? Kids like candy…"

The girl's hand tugs him along. His feet touch cold rock, through which a tremor is running. It starts as a crack, so far down… can she even feel it? It's been eating at her, so long now. Running under her bare, swollen feet. Does she even know her feet are swollen? Her skin… between her long elfin toes, it feels like fire. There is a burning at her heels which has nothing to do with their pace of descent.

It won't be long now. The air is thick, moldy. He doesn't think she can breathe in here, but she does. Perhaps she smells roses, instead of dust.

But he can smell it.

Grey. Heavy. Lying on top of them, settling over them, invisible, like a smallpox blanket wet with blood. So much. How many has that man made her kill? It's like a thick fog above their heads, all those deaths on her non-existent conscience. If he had been her parent, this wouldn't have happened. Although, perhaps it might have, if he's honest with himself.

She pulls him to a stop; he feels a rush of air push him to his feet, ending his momentum.

Her hands press his against something low.

It's icy, he can feel the chill before his fingers actually touch the thing.

Its contours suggest a square- he can't tell with the blindfold, but he doesn't mind. He's not her lover, only a visitor. Those ways are for the loyal and hooded young prince of her future, not the romantic leave-early magician of her past.

Absently he wonders who her parents were as his thoughts drift again to the suggestion of paintings on the rough cave walls.

Who or what had they been meant to depict?

_Ah well,_ he thinks, and he reaches to touch the sides of what he knows must be a box, to test a theory. _No, not a theory, more a wartime hypothesis. Stupid Time Lord, you're with a girl. You're bound to save her life sometime to-day. Selfish. Selfish. Selfish._

Her hand is on his.

His fingers stretch into the suddenly warm sand around the box… there are wood slats… wet…old. They give like termite-ridden planks when he presses. He is a Time Lord; his finesse is like no other's, the barest brush of grains on rotten wood, but still… why? Why is the wood so…

"Flamina," he says thickly. His throat feels full of molten lead. Even his mouth is burning.

"Flamina, you must let go of my hand and run to the mouth of the cave. Don't touch the box! Don't touch it!"

But her hand brushes his face, ice cold against him. His heat echoes her chill, rising in time to her breathing. Something sickly drags across his face, chunks of flesh, most likely. Suddenly the blindfold is in her hand, no longer string but her hair. It's falling out, snow on the filthy black shadow casting itself toward the light outside.

It's coming from the rotting box, that shadow. He knows it in his bones.

"Flamina, take my hand!" he cries, but he grabs it anyway… it's cold, her flesh.

He turns, with her hand safely in his. He tries to run.

His feet kick up so much gluey filth and sand as he flies away toward the mouth of the cave, but he runs. Oh yes. He's spent a lifetime training for this one. All they have to do is reach the mouth and then…

Three metres out of the lip of the cave, when the sunlight finally touches his face, he looks down and finds a plastic arm in his hand. Wasting breath on curses will not do her justice. So he tosses it outside into the sun. Onto the beach.

Then he spins on his heel, grasps the memory of sunlight close to his chest, and descends again, taking off the bowtie where a cravat used to be. He unties it, then walks backwards into the darkness of the cave again, quoting the mighty Edward Lear aloud while he winds it around his head and over his eyes...

"_There was an old man with a beard,_

_Who said, " It is just as I feared!—_

_Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren,_

_Have all built their nests in my beard."_


	26. Chapter 25 Between the Salt Water

Chapter Twenty-Five: Tell Her To Find Me An Acre of Land, Between the Salt Water and the Sea Strand

His hands press against the wall.

The stone feels cold, like the eyes of a woman who doesn't know him. It's his own fault, too. Or is it? Isn't it? One could go in circles.

As he forces himself up the ancient spiral stair, he traces his fingers randomly along the stone blocks and their grooves, feeling the bump as his skin touches stone, then air, then valley, then air, then stone again. It's like reading Braille. _It is a kind of Braille, really,_ he thinks as he attempts the next set of steps. Three more windows, and then the circular ruins. _What a shame no-one knows how to read it anymore…_

With one hand he follows the line of the long corkscrew up, plodding a bit; the other hand he keeps to the low of his stomach. Three flights to go and he still can't believe what he's done. What he was able to do. And all that he wasn't. _And_, he questions to the air, _do I even have a mistress at all?_

Another smile touches his lips as breath suddenly comes short to his lungs, but it's just another chocolate in a box of a thousand. In any case, he's walked all the way here, the one thousand, one hundred and eleven steps are almost ascended; he ought to finish the job. He really ought, before he sleeps. It's only the One thousandth, one hundredth and second step, after all. Only nine more to go.

"_We_ ought to finish the job, oughtn't we, precious girl?" he pants, the hand on his stomach curling into a claw. "I'm not exactly the Madonna on the Rocks, now am I? And neither are you, not anymore. But we'll get there soon. What's life if not for the delusion of duality, anyhow?" A twist of pain conspires in his gut, as though someone's shoved an entire bronze caduceus up his…

"Yes, miss!" he says, laughing and patting himself as he groans beneath the weight of a blastocyte's displeasure. Even his outie is sore.

Then he draws in a deep breath, raises his head up high, and makes another promise to take his vitamins as he ascends to the last dais before the tower room.

The windows ring like a circle of jeweled trees; all is the women. The Women, their Wings. They gaze outward from the arched walls enclosing the dais. But some of the windows are broken. He goes to one, the woman in the middle a single headless shard of breasts and torso, her white legs standing in red grass. He remembers when her wings were broken off, revealing the night sky beyond.

The windows are grimy, faded now with age and disuse. But they yield a spectacular view. To the glass queen's right and left, where once were wings, he can see Gallifrey in jagged gaps of ruby grassland and silver mountain range, painted on an amber skyline, a shining city of nature and man to the eyes of any diminutive tourist. It's been a long time since he's been here.

Too long, he thinks, as he reaches down to brush at an old stone bench, freeing it of a tailor's worth of cobwebs, and several thousand lifetimes' worth of bluish leaves and little greenish pellets of tafelshrew dung.

Spring cleaning never hurt anyone, much. It's what he keeps telling himself.

A few minutes later, he's finally recovered the utility of the seating arrangement, so he sits and he leans, venerating his body's superior self-sanitising properties, as every good obsessive-compulsive would. He feels like God. After all, the fluted strut holding up the arch of his lady's window is as welcome a place as any to take a nap.


	27. Chapter 26 Weekend at Borges

Chapter Twenty-Six: Weekend at Borges'

"…as I was saying, sir… His Lordship asked me to give you this- it's a device that allows you to travel through your personal timeline through presets. You are safely contained by the contained fractal algorithmic cage, so your current self remains here. You can project your mind back with this, to take care of things. As long as the failsafe is engaged. After you have performed the preset tasks in the allotted timeframes, it will return you here."

"Yes, yes, twit! Can you tell me what dates I need to address myself to?"

Nemontiarla smiles, tossing her brown hair back in a shower of kempt curls as she hands the ring and the mask to him. "The failsafe," she adds as he slips the gold ring on his finger and holds the mask to his face, "… is there for your protection. Don't try to disable it. You can't. Also, don't take off the mask until you take off the mask."

He stares at her from behind the bear's silver face. The flow of the carved hair fits perfectly against his cheeks, once he's thinned his face a bit. Of course, only a Time Lord would notice the difference. A little raising of his hairline… some lengthening of his hair.. oh yes. A much better fit. Just like before, when he had shown Flamina… his eyes widen, stretching open like the yawn of a cat's maw.

"How did I know to do this then? It's only been a few minutes since the Doctor left..."

He looks down at the golden ring on his finger. It's a simple band, carved in the style of a poesy, its slim length encased in thorny vines and topped by two crossed rosebuds, outfacing and twined. Must be some kind of time ring, the way it calls to him, whispering.

" You didn't. And you did. Now go."

She reaches across his arm to press the interlocking buds carved on the ring; they set in with a tiny click, and the Master's body begins to vibrate out of itself, creating echoes of him everywhere. One echo, he notices, is impaled on a shard of glass sticking up from the TARDIS' clockwork-façade temporal engine. The shard is nearly straight up; it must have been the one Flamina…

"And oh yes," the dowdy librarian muses as she places one hand against the Master's silver mask, motherly as she drapes rosy tippets from brown monk's sleeves in his congealing red-orange blood, "…did I mention? There's one thing that's absolutely essential to the device's ability to sidestep the physical laws of your own personal timeline…"

She caresses his face, as a fissure he can't see creaks past his fingers.

Krik-krak. Krik.

His eyes follow the line of his bleeding hand. The drying blood is shivering on top of the glass, flaking in shapes like rose petals that flutter down to land on his skin. His mind envisions clear water half-filling a tumbler as he looks at the tiny bits of blood, dry or drying, and some still wet. They're still falling on him, jarred from the flat surface by little waves of energy and sound. That water… it's about to shudder, and that shudder means…

Her mouth quirks. The scent of roses emanating from her is deafening, the words she speaks, moreso as she presses harder against his chest. The scent becomes a smell; the smell becomes a reek. Rotten roses fill his nose. He struggles to keep his face as far away from her as possible. But piles of petals pool on top of him, falling. Covering his head. He shakes himself, his hair flying in a rage away from his scalp as he cranes his neck first one way then the other, to avoid the smell of death, buried in the scent of dying flowers.

"Didn't I say?" the Rose Woman whispers, her voice the dregs of a rosy sunset as the jagged bit of floor he's holding breaks off in his hand and he falls, finally, "…you have to be dead."

To Be Continued in: Refusal of the Return.


End file.
